Pages

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Thank you all for the nice notes about my Verse Daily poem, Birdhouse. I challenged you to identify the form. Sadly, no one rose to that challenge! So I will now solve the mystery. It's an Anagram poem. I have five of them in my new book, one in each section.

I was introduced to this form by a friend. She'd just learned it in a workshop with Terrance Hayes. He has a bunch in his book, Wind in a Box, and defines the form in his end notes. You begin by choosing a word of substantial length. Then you quickly make as many words as you can from the letters in that word. You need a list of at least eleven words, but more is better. Hayes stipulates that all words must be four or more letters and words cannot be formed by the addition of an "s." I am not that strict.

For a second example, here's another anagram from my book. I'd recently come across the word "ecdysiast" and fallen in love with it, so it was one I wanted to work with. If you first just glance at the end words of my poem, you'll see that all of them—easy, cast, act, Yes, desist, and so on—are made up of letters from my lead word. You are free to not use the lead word as your title, but I think that there should be a connection between that word and the content of the poem. Now read the poem. Then read it aloud.

Ecdysiast

You think it's easy
to unravel the boa of feathers and cast
it off, to turn the act
of undressing into an art, suggest Yes
to each hungry face, go just so far and then desist?

Not one can touch, but all must leave feeling sated.

Sequins sparkle as she slinks across the dais,
peels the skirt and tosses it as if rolling dice,
and then the bustier, hook by hook, and thrown aside,
a spider molting, her gaze at once smoldering and icy,
the swivel of hips, to keep the tease slow and steady.

I hope that you noticed the sounds as you read. Lots of rhymes and near rhymes, assonance and consonance. For me, one of the really appealing aspects of this form is the sounds that result. You can't help but get music into the poem.

Now you know what's coming next, don't you? A challenge: Write your own anagram. Warning: This form is addictive. You'll find yourself working on words in your head when you ought to be paying attention to other things. So what! Enjoy.

I could have titled the poem something like "The Stripper" and added a bit more subtlety, but I'd just come across the word and found myself leaning towards it. Such a fancy word for what it means. I hope you'll enjoy working with the form. I think you will.

ShareThis

About Me

I live and write poetry in New Jersey. My most recent book is The Crafty Poet: A Portable Workshop. I am also the author of three full-length books, most recently Temptation by Water (Wind Pub, 2010). My second collection, What Feeds Us, received the 2006 Quentin R. Howard Poetry Prize. I am also the author of Eve's Red Dress and two chapbooks, Against Perfection and Greatest Hits 1997-2010. My poems appear in a number of anthologies such as Garrison Keillor's Good Poems for Hard Times and in such journals as Harvard Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Prairie Schooner. My poems have been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Writer’s Almanac.

What Feeds Us

Eve's Red Dress

Readings

Saturday, March 28, 2015, Girl Talk: A Poetry Reading in Celebration of Women's History Month, with more than two dozen women poets, West Caldwell Public Library, 30 Clinton Rd., West Caldwell, NJ, 1:00 - 4:00 PM